


From Here and There (Off in Faraway Lands)

by ohmygoshwhatascream



Series: Of Triples and Triads and Groups of Three (In Fortunate Numbers) [1]
Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: AU where the Grey Havens never takes place because it is illegally sad, Angst, F/M, Fluff, Frodo stays in the Shire, M/M, Multi, Polygamy, Post-Quest, based around the books, haha just kidding, unless...?, what if... sam and rosie and frodo were all in love and went and lived in Bag End all together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-24
Updated: 2020-01-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:47:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22378942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmygoshwhatascream/pseuds/ohmygoshwhatascream
Summary: When Sam and Frodo return, they are different. Not just in how they look, not just in their haggard eyes or scarred hands, but in other ways that Rosie can't even begin to comprehend. All she knows is that whatever horrors they faced out there are far worse than the demons she faced here, at home.She has changed too, though. She is no longer the same. But she has to believe that, together, everything will soon be alright.
Relationships: Frodo Baggins/Rose Cotton, Frodo Baggins/Rose Cotton/Sam Gamgee, Frodo Baggins/Sam Gamgee, Rose Cotton/Sam Gamgee
Series: Of Triples and Triads and Groups of Three (In Fortunate Numbers) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1610902
Comments: 4
Kudos: 71





	From Here and There (Off in Faraway Lands)

**Author's Note:**

> Always wanted to write something for an OT3, so here it is! 
> 
> Please let them be happy... I love them all so much.

Rosie Cotton is much smarter than many might think. She's no fool; even if she struggles with her letters and her handwriting comes out all thin and spidery-looking. (She's learning, slowly) Sure, she's not one of those fancy ladies with their pretty fans and expensive dresses and their nice-smelling perfumes and such. Sure, she can't read books if the letters are too small and if there are no pictures; and she doesn't understand why the leaves fall off the trees in winter or all the intricacies of the wild world, but she does know one thing for certain.

She will never truly know what happened to  _ them,  _ out on their grand adventure. (Although grand feels like the wrong word to describe it with. She does not see grandness on their return, she sees weariness and pain;  _ grief _ in their shadowed eyes)

Sure, she has an idea; they all do. Darkness had crept into the Shire eventually, and each and every Hobbit had felt the pain and torture that the rest of the world had already suffered under. Their sorrows had arrived later, but nonetheless it had proven that Hobbits could not hide from everything, no matter how hard they tried.

They had all lived through foodless nights and sunless days, suffered under the remnants of Saruman's broken army and felt the weight of shackles around their wrists. They had smelt fire and ash and watched as their green shire had been burned down to brown and grey. The colours had been sucked out of their peaceful lives and they had become trapped in monochrome. 

Things had been bad, then. 

Rosie hadn't left the house much when things had been like that. It had been bad enough for the men, the brothers and fathers and sons of the Shire, but Sharkey, as they had named the fallen White Wizard, and his cronies had… particular ideas and plans laid out for the women. (The  _ girls _ , Rosie thinks with sickness in her stomach, for that is what many of them had been) It had been safer to stay indoors, they had soon found out. Some, like Rosie, had found that out the hard way. (She was one of the lucky ones. She'd managed to get away before they could do anything. But she'd felt their hands… They'd tried. They'd tried so hard to-) But whatever hardships they had faced here, on their comfortable little doorsteps, it did not compare to the world out there. 

Their pains had seemed like mountains to them. Unclimbable walls of rock and steel, tipped with freezing snow and blustering winds. But behind their mountains, bigger ones had been looming. Their problems had been only a tiny portion of the shadows that had spread through Middle Earth like a wildfire in a drought. She knew this for she looked at Sam and Frodo and saw the scars that would never heal, the ghosts that haunted their eyes. There had been worse things; out there in the world. Even if it was all over, even if everything would eventually return to normal. (Or as close as it could get to normal. Things can never go back to how they once were. No two harvests are ever the same; change is forever, but soon those changes will become the new normal. Soon, those changes will become home once more)

Frodo and Sam had returned, yes, but it was not the same two hobbits who came back.

Meriadoc Brandybuck and Peregrin Took had changed too (apparently. She had not known them well beforehand) - but perhaps in a different way. Captains now, they were. And they told long stories of their fantastical tales to anyone who'd stay still enough to listen. Old Gaffers and Gammers and fauntlings and anyone who crossed their paths were badgered with countless tales of walking talking trees; tall as the highest mountains, or maybe they would speak of the great cities of men built upon marbled white and all sorts of stories of knights and kings and stewards. Ones that sounded straight out of a fairytale, not the world that they lived and breathed on. 

Their travels had faced hardships, most certainly, (for they spoke fondly of all their friends, but that of Boromir was only ever said in the highest of all regards) but it was not the same. 

Sam and Frodo brought darkness from faraway lands back with them. Pieces of shadow, pieces of the world where the light did not touch. They were damaged in ways, parts of them broken in pieces that can't be mended.

She thinks of the time Tom broke their mother's favourite teapot. They had spent all day trying to piece it back together, but they never could get it back to how it once was. It drips, now. Doesn't pour right. No matter how hard they tried, there are some pasts that you can't erase; some scars that will stay forever.

But they had fixed the teapot and, although it was bashed and bruised and not quite right, their mother had kissed them on their foreheads and served them tea out of it later that day.

Sam and Frodo, however, aren't teapots and their broken edges can't be glued back together. Scars blemish their skin in crimson paint, skin puckered and bruised where they could never fully heal. They were both thinner, though perhaps not as thin as they once had been; there had been some time for them to recover, after all. But they still looked sick. They still didn't look quite right. They weren't the Hobbits she remembered.

They return, somehow, and Rosie is there as Sam makes his way over the horizon. He smiles when he sees her, takes her up in his arms and she feels his breath against the curls of her hair. He is different, he is damaged; he is thinner than he once was, but so is she. They all are, now. It is another change they will have to get used to, another change that they will eventually glue back together.

She traces the healed edges of a scar on his forehead, a line of white on his dark skin. He smiles at her as if everything is right in the world and his hands are large and warm and gentle on her hips. She leans up on her tiptoes, head tilted and eyes fluttering shut.

His lips are soft and he tastes of sunlight

But she feels a chill down her spine. When they pull away, high flush risen on their cheeks, Frodo is watching them. Blue eyes and dark curls. He looks at Sam like a lifeline and Rosie realises that things have changed. 

She steps backwards and invites them round for afternoon tea.

x

The rebuilding of the Shire is a steady process. Sam sees to most of it, with his strange soil that Rosie just  _ knows  _ is full of some sort of magic that she can't understand. It has a presence, though. She knows it is different, not the sort of soil found in the Shire but instead one from faraway lands. So Sam is gone for much of the time. She does not hold any contempt towards his actions, for Sam's heart has always been as large as Middle Earth itself and she knows that he could never truly be at peace with her, not until the Shire had been saved and returned once more to its former glory.

His absence, however, leaves both Rosie and Frodo at loose ends. While he travels about to the very farthest reaches of the Shire, Frodo is simply too ill for such things and Rosie is needed at home. He must go alone, and they must stay behind.

It probably does not seem like such a distance to someone who had been to the very end of all things, but to Rosie, she feels Sam's absence like a knife to the gut. She'd thought he'd been gone forever back then and now that he is with them once more… it hurts to watch him leave, even if it is only temporary and he will soon be back. 

She is patient, and she waits for Sam. 

When he returns, he brings her flowers. She kisses him then, wraps her arms around his shoulders and holds him tight as if she will never let go of him again.

But she eventually does and she will take a step back, flushing as he leans in for another; chaste and sweet.

Sometimes, Frodo is there. Sometimes he watches, not purposefully, but the Cotton household is quite small and there's only so many places Rosie and Sam can take a moment for themselves.

Strangely, it does not bother Rosie as much as one might think.

Something has shifted between Sam and Frodo on their travels. She can see it in the way Frodo looks at him, see it in the fleeting glances Sam sends back. 

It's the way she looks at Sam, the way Sam looks at her. 

(the way that, she soon comes to realise, she begins to look at Frodo) 

x

It is with determination that Rosie makes her way up to Bag End smial, mop in hand and bucket in the other. Her brothers had mentioned that Bagshot Row had been reconstructed once more, that the lane had been relaid and the houses rebuilt from whence they had been damaged.

Sam has been away for longer this time and the letter he'd sent had said he'd still be a few weeks. She was feeling his absence. She missed him. 

She looks at Frodo, who stares outside windows and looks over the horizon as if he is searching for something. His skin is too pale and he still won't eat properly. He's not happy, not here. Not without Sam.

But, if she can restore Bag End, then maybe he can go home. Maybe that will make him feel better.

And once the work around the Shire is complete, then Sam can be his gardener once more. 

(But where does that leave her, she wonders. What is her place, betwixt all of this? What is she doing?)

She does not quite know what to do with herself in all honesty, but she wants to help. She wants to do something, anything at all.

She doesn't understand why Frodo, face forlorn and hands clenched, makes her heart take on such pain. But she knows that she wants to make him happy, make everything a tiny bit better - even if she can't fix anything.

(It's for Sam, she tells herself. Making Frodo happy will make Sam happy, that's why she's doing this. But, on occasion, Frodo will look at her with a softness in his eyes and she'll feel the flutter of butterflies in her stomach that she can't explain as to why)

x

She had thought she had been rather secretive about her trips up to Bag End. She'd certainly managed to hide it from her family (having two nosey brothers had made her good at hiding things she did not wish to share) but Frodo was another matter.

On her sixth trip to Bagshot Row, with a tin of paint in her hands, she hears the pattering of footsteps behind her. She turns, surprised. She'd woken up earlier than usual this morning, making her less cautious as she had left. She must have been too loud.

Frodo walks behind her some few steps away, something akin to amusement flashing in his eyes. It's the happiest she's seen him without Sam.

Something unexpected hums in her chest that  _ she  _ has managed to make him happier, even if he was supposed to have no idea what she was up to.

"Sorry, did I wake you up?" She asks, tossing her curls over her shoulder as she waits for him to catch up. He falls into stride with her and together they make their way to Bag End. "No. It's fine. I was already awake." His tone is tight, reserved. Rosie does not need to ask what had been keeping him up, the bags under his eyes prove his words and she sees the silvery film of old ghosts cloud his eyes.

Without thinking, she takes his hand in hers. They're not like Sam's, they're smaller and daintier. More like her own, aside from the missing finger. 

It's different, but it's nice.

"I presume you're here to help me, then?" She asks with a raised eyebrow, raising the tin of paint held in her other hand.

He nods, a small smile on his lips.

x

When Sam eventually returns, Bag End is almost complete.

Of course, it is not the same as it once was. Rosie's illusions of single-handedly restoring Bag End to its former glory had quickly been distinguished the first time she had stepped foot in it.

Some furniture was beyond repair, burned and scorched and kicked into pieces. The mattresses were ruined and the windows still needed fixing, but it was good enough.

Apparently Frodo had furniture he'd sent over to his temporary house in Crickhollow. Eventually, they'd bring them back over and make Bag End a home anew.

Although it is not quite finished, it is good enough.

x

Her and Sam and Frodo go up there, eventually. Once Sam brings the furniture down from Crickhollow only a week after his return. It's all over now. It's fit to live in and Frodo will move in permanently come the start of the next week.

Sam will go with him, she presumes. Bag End needs its gardener, after all, and Sam has barely left Frodo's side since his return. (He'd been ill. Not normal 'ill', not like a cold or sickness bug. It was something strange, like a curse or a shadow. Rosie cannot imagine Sam will leave Frodo alone)

Her heart aches. Not only for Sam, but for Frodo as well.

Somehow, somewhere along the line, she has become attached to the two of them in a way she can't quite explain. She doesn't want either of them to leave.

She wants to go with them.

x

It is morning when the two set out to leave, no bags in their hands for they had already moved them. They had been prepared. They were ready to go back home.

She stands to watch them go, feeling incredibly foolish when tears prick at her eyes.  _ They're only moving a short walk away,  _ she tells herself.  _ Isn't this what you wanted? Isn't this why you tidied up Bag End? Didn't you want everything to go back to how it once was?  _

But she realises that when she had dreamed of Bag End restored once more, it hadn't just been a clean smial she had thought of.

She'd seen herself at Bag End kitchen, hands around a cup of tea, Frodo sitting across from her. Sam, in her fantasy world, would come in then. Cheeks smeared with dirt and his hands and arms stained with green, a smile on his face. He'd come round to kiss her cheek, soft and chaste, and she would turn her head, lips meeting his. Then Frodo would come to stand, move over to him, hands tangling Sam's hair and blue eyes bright and sparkling. Sam would kiss him then, too, and Rosie would look up at them like they were all she needed in the world.

_ You fool,  _ she thinks to herself.  _ Lost in your own dreams, your own fantasies. This is what comes of make-believe. None of it was real and none of it ever will be. _

But Sam and Frodo stop in their tracks, turning round to look at her. She waves to them.

Sam frowns. "A-aren't you coming with us?" He asks, gold hair shimmering in the sun. 

Rosie stops, pauses, blinks.

Then she smiles, a brightness spun from glowing silver. She trips in her eagerness to catch up with them, hands on her skirts and feet stumbling on the cobbled ground. Two hands reach out to catch her. One broad and brown and made of sunlight, one slender and delicate and woven of the stars.

Together, they make their way up to Bag End, Rosie in the middle. When her hands hesitantly reach for the others', it comes as the most natural thing in the world. 

_ Three,  _ she thinks.  _ Three is a fortunate number. _

It's not conventional, it's not  _ normal  _ and she's sure there will be a  _ lot  _ of questions to answer, but nothing has ever felt so right.

Maybe things don't have to go back to normal for everything to be okay. Things can change, she realises, and be a million times better than before.

**Author's Note:**

> always thought samfro was my brand but maybe now we gotta extend this to just writing about Rosie Cotton because oh wow i absolutely adore her


End file.
